Zacarias Moussaoui

Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said.

The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

The case could begin to fulfill a longtime goal of the Bush administration: establishing culpability for the terrorist attacks of 2001. It could also help the administration make its case that some detainees at Guantánamo, where 275 men remain, would pose a threat if they are not held at Guantánamo or elsewhere. Officials have long said that a half-dozen men held at Guantánamo played essential roles in the plot directed by Mr. Mohammed, from would-be hijackers to financiers.

But the case would also bring new scrutiny to the military commission system, which has a troubled history and has been criticized as a system designed to win convictions but that does not provide the legal protections of American civilian courts.

War-crimes charges against the men would almost certainly place the prosecutors in a battle over the treatment of inmates because at least two… Continue reading →

On Tuesday 26th February, Europarliamentarian Guilietto Chiesa invited his colleagues and the press to attend the screening and debate of the Italian-produced documentary named ‘ZERO, an investigation into the events of 9/11′. Object of the screening was to create political awareness of the faulty official investigation into the events by the 9/11 Commission.

Besides Mr Chiesa, the panel consisted of Japanese parliamentarian Fujita, Dr David Ray Griffin, film distributor Tim Sparke & the director and producers of the film.

After his opening statements, Mr Chiesa welcomed his guest speakers. Then he pointed out that he was unable to find any distributor in his native country of Italy and was happy to find a company in the UK, led by Mr Tim Sparke, to handle worldwide distribution of this important film. ‘It is important to realize,’ he emphasized ‘that the movie was made thanks to contribution and donations of hundreds of citizens who feel a new investigation is more than warranted.’ No less than 450 people worked on this documentary on a voluntary basis. They never received any kind of payment. Their reward is the movie itself, which they feel is an instrument to create awareness and a means to provoke a political debate in Europe.

Since the movie projector didn’t work, Mr Chiesa invited the public to ask questions until the technical problems were solved and we could start watching the movie.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers urged Zacarias Moussaoui not to plead guilty to terrorism charges. They just couldn’t tell him why.

In newly filed court documents, Moussaoui argues that court-imposed secrecy undermined his ability to present an adequate defense. His new lawyers say Moussaoui’s guilty plea should be thrown out and a new trial should be convened for the man who once claimed to have been a part of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist plot.

Moussaoui was not allowed to see the classified evidence against him and was shut out from closed-door hearings in which that evidence was laid out.

Defense lawyers say they were barred from even discussing with Moussaoui evidence that could help prove his innocence. They say Moussaoui faced an unconstitutional choice: plead guilty or go to trial without knowing the evidence.

The documents, filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., raise a fundamental question about whether terrorism suspects like Moussaoui should be given access to all the evidence against them — access that is normally guaranteed in criminal cases.

The Bush administration has sought to avoid such conflicts by keeping most terrorism cases out of civilian courts. Instead, officials plan to try several cases before special military commissions at the Guantánamo Bay naval base, where judges have broad authority… Continue reading →

GUANTÃNAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – The U.S. military will televise the Guantánamo trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five other suspects so relatives of those killed in the attacks can watch on the U.S. mainland.

“We’re going to broadcast in real time to several locations that will be available just to victim families,” Army Col. Lawrence Morris, chief prosecutor for the controversial war crimes court, said at the naval base recently.

In February, military prosecutors charged Mohammed and five other captives with murder and conspiracy and asked that they be executed if convicted of plotting to crash hijacked planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

No trial date has been set but they are the first Guantánamo prisoners charged with direct involvement in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Morris said several of the victims’ relatives asked to watch the trials at the detention center set up in Guantánamo Bay naval base to try foreign terrorism suspects.

The base sits on a dusty patch of the island of Cuba and does not have many flights, beds or courtroom seats to accommodate spectators.

The trials will be beamed to closed-circuit television viewing sites on military bases at Fort Hamilton in New York, Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland and Fort Devens in Massachusetts, Morris said.

The military is borrowing a page from the civilian court sentencing hearing of Zacarias Moussaoui, a flight school student who is the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the September 11 plot.…

NEW YORK: Aviation companies sued by the families of Sept. 11 victims for failing to safeguard air travel are in turn blaming federal investigators — arguing the Federal Aviation Administration was not alerted that al-Qaida was poised to launch terrorist attacks.

In court documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, aviation companies are seeking to force five FBI employees to provide testimony that may help defend against claims the companies share blame in the attacks.

“The aviation parties anticipate that the FBI witnesses’ testimony will demonstrate that the FBI had information before Sept. 11 indicating that al-Qaida may have been about to launch terrorist attacks on civil aviation, which it did not timely pass along to the Federal Aviation Administration,” lawyers wrote.

The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

The companies in turn filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The latest documents filed by the airlines, airport authorities, security companies and an aircraft manufacturer argue that if the FAA had known about an FBI investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, it could have amended security measures to guard against the type of terrorist attack Moussaoui was planning.

Indefinite military detentions of persons apprehended within the United States
are legal, according to a Tuesday federal appeals court decision. (Read text
of decision.) However, a concurrent decision allows detainee Ali al-Marri (pictured)
to challenge his detention in court.

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions
of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond,
Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.

But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen
of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional
opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court
proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from
a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.

The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained
that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept.
11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United
States.

The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members,
which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians
legally in the United States as enemy combatants. That panel ordered the government
either to charge Mr. Marri or to release him. The case is likely to reach… Continue reading →

The assertion that 9/11 passengers lists “contained no Arab names” is frequently seen in the 9/11 truth movement. [1] For example, this article by Enver Masud is headlined, “Why are there no Arab names on the passenger list for the planes used in the September 11, 2001 attack…?” [2] The 9/11 website 9/11 Hard Facts claims, “[On] officially released passenger lists provided by the airlines to the media, no Arab names appear on any of the four passenger lists.” [3] In David Ray Griffin’s 9/11: The Myth and the Reality , he repeats the claim that, “[Their] names should be on the flight manifests. But the flight manifests that have been released contain neither the names of the alleged hijackers nor any other Arab names.” [4] John Leonard, Webster Tarpley and Kevin Barrett’s publisher, repeats the claim that “Scholars [for 9/11 Truth]… report things like ‘there were no Arabs on the passenger lists’” [5] As well, Michael C. Ruppert, citing Gary North wrote, “Another easy and non-debatable hole is with the passenger lists and the hijackers. Gary North, Ph.D. – a history professor… relied on lists published by CNN… Official reports state that there were only 19 hijackers.…

In THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED , David Ray Griffin provides a brilliant and much-needed companion to his path-breaking and movement-building book on 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor (NPH; 2004). Now, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of those horrific events, Griffin surveys in detail all the main lines of evidence against the official account of 9/11 to have emerged during the last four years. THE NEW PEARL HARBOR REVISITED (NPHR) has been designed as volume 2 of a two-volume set with NPH as volume 1; together they provide a thorough and up-to-date case against the official conspiracy theory (they can be bought separately, of course).

Griffin has already published four other books that provide in-depth analysis of most of the evidence to have emerged since 2004. NPHR’s main purpose is to provide an easily accessible survey of all of the new evidence, so that it is now possible for a beginner to the subject (including journalists and members of Congress) to master its enormous complexity simply by reading two books. NPHR is structured identically to NPH; each chapter in NPHR comments and builds on the corresponding chapter in NPH. Much of the content is entirely new; there are many facts and analyses in NPHR which Griffin presents for the first time, and which literally make the book an up-to-the-minute statement of the case.

In the Preface, Griffin explains why he undertook to “update” The New Pearl Harbor . In the Introduction he… Continue reading →

This is a news item pertaining to the Complete 911 Timeline investigative project, one of several grassroots investigations being hosted on the History Commons website. The
data published as part of this investigation has been collected, organized, and published by members of the public who are registered users of this website.

9/28/2008: Pentagon on 9/11, Shoe Bombing, Bin Laden in the Soviet-Afghan War and More – Additions as of September 28, 2008

NEW YORK — Two dozen family members of Sept. 11 victims signed a letter
Wednesday saying they don’t believe in the fairness of the military trials of
five men charged with orchestrating the terrorist attacks, and some suggested
their opinions cost them attendance at the proceedings.

While the family members who attended this week’s proceedings at Guantánamo
Bay Naval Base in Cuba expressed support for the tribunals, they also said "that
many of us do not believe these military commissions to be fair, in accordance
with American values, or capable of achieving the justice that 9/11 family members
and all Americans deserve," according to the letter released by the American
Civil Liberties Union.

Robin Theurkauf, whose husband was killed at the World Trade Center, said she
wanted to attend the proceedings but was denied a spot in a lottery for family
members.

"I testified for the defense in the (Zacarias) Moussaoui trial,"
Theurkauf said, referring to the convicted Sept. 11 conspirator. "I think
I was skipped over because of that."

Lorie Van Auken, whose husband Kenneth was killed at the trade center, also
wanted to attend the hearings. She has been a prominent critic of the Guantánamo
proceedings, accusing the government of using torture to coerce confessions.

"It could be that they didn’t want the critical voices to be heard,"
Van Auken said.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednedsay that five family
members from a pool of 113… Continue reading →

Former 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton recently made some bizarre comments about the Zacarias Moussaoui case in an interview for Vanity Fair. The interview was used for a wide-ranging and very interesting oral history of the Bush White House. Hamilton’s comments appear to show complete ignorance of a key aspect of the investigation of which he was vice chair.

Moussaoui was arrested on an immigration violation due to suspicions he was planning to hijack an aircraft by the Minneapolis FBI on 16 August 2001, nearly four weeks before 9/11. His personal effects contained evidence linking him to eleven of the nineteen alleged hijackers and the local FBI suspected that he was part of a wider plot. It correctly assumed a search of the effects would uncover his links to the other conspirators. However, due to obstruction by FBI headquarters, no warrant was ever granted to search Moussaoui’s belongings. Middle managers at headquarters also failed to properly inform their superiors of the case.

Here are Hamilton’s comments on the Moussaoui case:

We knew, for example–when I say we, I mean the F.B.I. in Minneapolis knew–that those guys in flight-training school were more interested in flying the airplane than they were in taking off and landing. They knew that. Who didn’t know it? The director of the F.B.I. didn’t know it. The director of the C.I.A. did know it. His response was that it was none of his business. Technically correct,… Continue reading →

My lecture is entitled “9/11: Time for a Second Look.” In suggesting that it is time for people to take a second look at 9/11, I have in mind primarily people who decided long ago that the attacks of 9/11 happened essentially the way the Bush-Cheney administration and the official reports about 9/11 said they happened, and who therefore decided that the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, which disputes that account, is comprised of crazy conspiracy theorists with no capacity to evaluate evidence objectively. Having formed these views long ago, such people, including most journalists, have been impervious to any arguments presented by the Truth Movement. They simply roll their eyes and move on.

However, both the Truth Movement and the available evidence have changed dramatically in the past three years. Because of these changes, it is not rational to reject the claims of this movement out of hand, without taking a second look. If you are a person who has had such an attitude, you cannot, in the face of these changes, simply roll your eyes without exhibiting the very irrationality of which you accuse the people you dismiss as “conspiracy theorists.”

My lecture is also addressed, albeit indirectly, to fellow members of the Truth Movement. Some members have decided that, now that Bush and Cheney are out of office and the Obama administration has reversed some of their 9/11-based policies, getting the truth about 9/11 revealed is no longer so important. Other members of the… Continue reading →

Lawyers for a Guantánamo Bay detainee will be allowed to question — in
writing — accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a federal
judge has ruled. The decision is a setback for government lawyers who had sought
to limit the scope of detainee lawyers’ challenges to the detention and prosecution
of terror suspects.

In a written ruling, Judge Ricardo Urbina says lawyers for detainee Abdul Raheem
Ghulam Rabbani can submit written questions about their client to Mohammed.
Prosecutors say he worked for Mohammed, but Rabbani’s lawyers contend he was
just a menial servant, not a part of any terror network.

The ruling says prosecutors may review the answers before delivering them to
Rabbani’s lawyers to remove any national security information.

Government lawyers had unsuccessfully sought to convince the judge that any
questioning of Mohammed by Rabbani’s lawyers would risk exposing details of
sensitive intelligence programs.

Urbina’s 15-page decision says Mohammed may have information that could help
Rabbani’s case, and allows Rabbani’s lawyers to submit “a list of narrowly
tailored” questions for Mohammed.

Mohammed has boasted of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, and he is the most
high-profile detainee of the 229 terror suspects held at the detention facility
at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

His possible testimony was a contentious issue in another terrorism case, the
trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. The court ruled… Continue reading →

Former FBI agent Colleen Rowley discusses still unanswered questions about the lead up to 9/11. Coleen Rowley is a former FBI agent and whistleblower. Rowley jointly held the TIME “Person of the Year” award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers.

As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators go to trial, the corporate media’s embargo on the truth about the Bush years will be under great strain.

Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.

“I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at” is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denney LeBoeuf put it, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

No problem, says Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims to have “great confidence” that other evidence — apart from what may have been gleaned from the 183 times Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, for example — will suffice to convict him.

Maybe so, But what the Fawning Corporate Media (or FCM) have so far neglected is the likelihood that the testimony will be so public that they will have to break their studied silence about why Sheikh Mohammed and his associates say they orchestrated the attacks of 9/11.

For reasons that are painfully obvious, the FCM have done their best to ignore or bury the role that Israel’s repression of the Palestinians has played in motivating the 9/11 attacks and other anti-Western terrorism.

It is not like there is no evidence on this key issue. Rather, it appears that the Israel-Palestine connection is pretty much kept off limits for discussion.…

On Tuesday, May 11 at 6:00pm CDT on 90.1 FM KKFI Community Radio (Kansas City), ‘Tell Somebody‘ host Tom Klammer will feature former FBI Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel Coleen Rowley and 27- year CIA analyst and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity cofounder Ray McGovern. The program will stream live at www.kkfi.org.

Rowley’s team had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui just three weeks before 9/11, and was denied a warrant to search his computer by FBI headquarters. Rowley was on the cover of Time magazine’s 2002 Person of the Year issue with two other whistleblowers after she went public with a blistering letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question

There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.”1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.

Although there are many similarities between these two wars, there is also a big difference: This time, there is no draft. If there were a draft, so that college students and their friends back home were being sent to Afghanistan, there would be huge demonstrations against this war on campuses all across this country. If the sons and daughters of wealthy and middle-class parents were coming home in boxes, or with permanent injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome, this war would have surely been stopped long ago. People have often asked: Did we learn any of the “lessons of Vietnam”? The US government learned one: If you’re going to fight unpopular wars, don’t have a draft — hire mercenaries!

There are many other questions that have been, and should be, asked about this war, but in this essay, I focus on only one: Did the 9/11 attacks justify the war in Afghanistan?… Continue reading →

According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles.

After documenting this charge in Part I of this essay, I show in Part II that the exact opposite is the case: that the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center implies miracles (I give nine examples), and that the 9/11 Truth Movement, in developing an alternative hypothesis, has done so in line with the assumption that the laws of nature did not take a holiday on 9/11. In Part III, I ask these left-leaning critics some questions evoked by the fact that it is they, not members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, who have endorsed a conspiracy theory replete with miracle stories as well as other absurdities.

I. The Charge that 9/11 Truth Theories Rest on Unscientific, Even Magical, Beliefs

Several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, besides showing contempt for its members, charge them with relying on claims that are contradicted by good science and, in some cases, reflect a belief… Continue reading →